Practice · SīlaVolume FourPart IV · Mahāyāna TurnPaper 13 of 30

Nāgārjuna on Śīla-Pāramitā

中文主題：龍樹《大智度論》之尸羅波羅蜜

Author: Shi Huijing 釋慧鏡

Date: Spring 2026

ID: SILA-P13

Abstract

This paper takes the śīla-pāramitā chapter of Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509, translated by Kumārajīva during the Later Qin Hongshi reign, 401–406), spanning fascicles 13 and 14, as its primary corpus and argues that the chapter exhibits a dual-anchor architecture. The first anchor is the single sūtra-line that opens fascicle 13 — "Because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā" — which installs the anupalabdhi (unobtainability) layer of prajñāpāramitā as the precept's prior orientation. The second anchor is the narrative concretization of fascicle 14: the poison-dragon's voluntary submission unto death by ant-bite (a jātaka freshly narrated in fascicle 14) and King Sutasoma's refusal to abandon his vow even at the cost of body and life (a back-reference to the complete narrative housed in fascicle 4). The two anchors are not joined by external commentary; T1509 itself textually self-glosses the dual-anchor architecture, first at fascicle 14 line 158 (a bridge passage that recursively cites fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line and pairs it with the bodhicitta-motivated reframing through a parallel "復次" construction) and again at fascicle 14 line 219 (a chapter-closing recursive citation of the same line in declarative form). Placed within the 5th–6th-century co-emergence of the pāramitā-framing across the Pāli and Northern lineages — both of which thematize śīla as a pāramī(tā) only in their post-canonical strata — Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution is identified not as the pāramitā-framing itself but as the addition of the anupalabdhi layer to it, by which "unobtainable" (paramārtha) and "unbreakable" (saṃvṛti) stand as two truths simultaneously rather than as stages of a linear teleology. The Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā (T1521, attributed to Nāgārjuna and translated by Kumārajīva), in its five-chapter śīla sequence in fascicles 16–17, supplies a sister-corpus confirmation that the anupalabdhi layer is a distributed feature of the Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus rather than a localized peculiarity of T1509. A three-way dialogue with Étienne Lamotte, Paul Williams, and Damien Keown situates the paper's contribution within the sparse English-language scholarship on T1509.

I. Introduction: From the Three-Cluster Architecture to Śīla-Pāramitā

The previous paper in this volume (P12) closed by reconstructing the three-cluster architecture of bodhisattva śīla — saṃvara-śīla, kuśala-dharma-saṃgrāhaka-śīla, and sattvārtha-kriyā-śīla — as the three-dimensional functional design articulated by Asaṅga in the Bodhisattvabhūmi and later mapped by the Tiantai precept-commentary tradition (Mingkuang's Tiantai pusa jie shu, T1812) onto the three bodies of Buddhahood (trikāya).¹ That paper supplied the structural map of what the bodhisattva precepts are. It did not address a further question: how do the bodhisattva precepts become a pāramitā — a completed perfection of the bodhisattva path? The classical answer is supplied by Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509; hereafter the Śāstra), translated by Kumārajīva in the Later Qin (Hongshi 3–8, 401–406), whose fascicles 13 and 14 are devoted to the śīla-pāramitā (尸羅波羅蜜) — the perfection of moral conduct. The thesis of this paper proceeds in two layers. The first layer is structural: T1509's śīla-pāramitā chapter exhibits a dual-anchor architecture. The first anchor is the single sūtra-line that opens fascicle 13: 「罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜」 — "because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā."² This line installs the anupalabdhi (不可得, "unobtainability") layer of prajñāpāramitā as the precept's prior orientation: unobtainability first, perfection after. The second anchor is the narrative concretization of fascicle 14, where two jātakas — the poison-dragon's voluntary submission to ant-bite (fascicle 14 lines 24–45, freshly narrated) and King Sutasoma's refusal to break his vow even unto death (fascicle 14 lines 21–24, back-referencing the complete narrative housed in fascicle 4) — demonstrate that anupalabdhi does not amount to non-keeping: precisely because transgression is unobtainable, the precept becomes unbreakable at the threshold of bodily survival. The second layer of the thesis concerns the internal connection of the two anchors. That connection is not an external commentarial overlay. T1509 itself textually self-glosses the architecture. At fascicle 14 line 158, a bridge passage reads: 「復次，若菩薩於罪、不罪不可得故，是時，名為尸羅波羅蜜」 — "Furthermore, when the bodhisattva [knows] that transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, that itself is named śīla-pāramitā." The line recursively cites fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line and pairs it, by a parallel 「復次」 ("furthermore") construction, with the bodhicitta-motivated reframing of the precepts. At fascicle 14 line 219, the chapter closes with a final recursive citation: 「以是故言『於罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜』」 — "Therefore it is said: 'Because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā.'" The chapter is thereby sealed within a three-layer recursive frame — opening (fascicle 13), midpoint (fascicle 14 line 158), close (fascicle 14 line 219) — that is the Śāstra's own internal marker of its architectural design. The dual-anchor reading therefore does not require a "the present paper proposes" qualifier; it is T1509's own textual self-gloss, and this paper's subtitle (The Dual-Anchor Architecture) is named for the Śāstra's self-glossing, not for an interpretive overlay imposed from outside the text.³ A second, historically stronger claim is built on the first. Within the 5th–6th-century co-emergence of the pāramitā-framing of śīla across the Pāli and Northern lineages — both of which thematize śīla as a pāramī(tā) only in their post-canonical strata — Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution is not the pāramitā-framing itself (a shared post-canonical thematization across both lineages) but the addition of the anupalabdhi layer to it: making the unobtainable (paramārtha) and the unbreakable (saṃvṛti) stand as two truths simultaneously rather than as stages of a linear teleology. The paper proceeds in six chapters. Chapter II reads the chapter-opening anupalabdhi axis of fascicle 13. Chapter III reads the narrative concretization of fascicle 14, with philological attention to the Sutasoma back-reference and the jātaka-sources. Chapter IV examines the Śāstra's self-gloss bridge at lines 158 and 219, and the anupalabdhi-dialectic at lines 164–169 that runs between them. Chapter V places Nāgārjuna's architecture within the 5th–6th-century co-emergence of the pāramitā-framing, supplements the analysis with the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā (T1521) sister-corpus evidence, and stages a three-way dialogue with Étienne Lamotte, Paul Williams, and Damien Keown. Chapter VI concludes by identifying the anupalabdhi layer as Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution and points forward to the Bodhisattvabhūmi's nine-fold śīla taxonomy, the subject of the next paper in this volume.

II. The Chapter-Opening Anupalabdhi Axis (Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra Fascicle 13)

2.1 The Single Sūtra-Line and the Priority of Anupalabdhi

Fascicle 13 of the Śāstra opens not with a definition, not with a typology, and not with a survey of the precepts' merits, but with a single sūtra-line that the commentary will then expound:

【經】「罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜。」

(Translator's rendering: "Because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā.")²

The line's syntax is minimal but its sequence is significant. A causal joint links two clauses: "because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable" is the antecedent, "one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā" the consequent. The peculiarity is that the antecedent is not an affirmative proposition but a double negation: transgression (罪 zuì) is unobtainable, and non-transgression (不罪 bù-zuì) is equally unobtainable. What is anupalabdhi? The Sanskrit term, glossed in the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā and elsewhere by the cognate phrase anupalambha-yoga ("the practice of non-apprehension," 無所得行), does not deny the conventional reality of transgression or non-transgression. Killing remains a conventionally evil act; precept-keeping remains a conventionally meritorious one. What anupalabdhi denies is that transgression and non-transgression can be apprehended as self-existent natures (svabhāva, 自性) — independently subsisting, ostensively identifiable, graspable as such. Under the gaze of prajñā, neither is "obtainable" in this sense. From the standpoint of ultimate truth (paramārtha, 勝義), both are unobtainable. The structural fact to register is that anupalabdhi is not added to the precepts as a later prajñā-flavored interpretation. The sūtra itself sets anupalabdhi as the precepts' prior orientation. Kumārajīva's translation-bureau, at the chapter's opening, does not first set out precept-categories, precept-essences, or precept-merits and then qualify them by anupalabdhi as a later overlay. The single sūtra-line is permitted to stand first — a deliberate authorial sequence that registers an internal verdict of the prajñāpāramitā literature: perfection (pāramitā) of the precepts, without passing through the filter of anupalabdhi, remains the accumulation of conventional merit and has not yet entered the territory of perfection proper.⁴

2.2 「秦言性善」 — A Translation-Bureau Gloss, Not Nāgārjuna's Metaphysics

Immediately after the sūtra-line, the Śāstra offers a brief lexical gloss:

「尸羅（秦言性善），好行善道，不自放逸，是名尸羅。或受戒行善，或不受戒行善，皆名尸羅。」

(Translator's rendering: "Śīla — [in the Qin tongue, 'natural goodness'] — is the disposition to delight in good conduct and to refrain from heedlessness; this is named śīla. Whether one cultivates the good through receiving the precepts or without receiving them, all is named śīla.")⁵

The parenthetical phrase 「秦言性善」 ("in the Qin tongue, 'natural goodness'") deserves philological care. The bracketed gloss is not part of Nāgārjuna's Sanskrit; it is a translator's note inserted by the Kumārajīva translation-bureau in the Later Qin. The Śāstra contains numerous formulae of the structure "秦言 X" — for example, the same fascicle 13 elsewhere glosses the term uposatha (布薩) as 「秦言共住」 ("in the Qin tongue, 'cohabitation'"), with identical syntax.⁶ The "Qin tongue" (秦言) refers to the Later Qin (姚秦) dynasty during which Kumārajīva worked; the formula is a translation-bureau convention for marking a transliterated Sanskrit term and supplying a Chinese semantic gloss. The philological consequence is consequential. When a modern reader meets the phrase 「尸羅，秦言性善」, the reader is not encountering Nāgārjuna's metaphysical definition of śīla but the Later Qin translation-bureau's semantic choice — Kumārajīva and his collaborators (Sengrui 僧叡, Sengzhao 僧肇, and others) selecting xìng-shàn 性善 ("natural goodness") as a Chinese rendering for the Sanskrit śīla. This distinction matters substantively. The term xìng 性 in Chinese carries a strong essentialist resonance — it can be read as nature in an own-being sense, suggesting that śīla names a natural essence of goodness in the bodhisattva. But Nāgārjuna's overall position, articulated across the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā and the Śāstra itself, is that all dharmas lack svabhāva (自性). If xìng-shàn were read as natural essence of goodness, it would directly contradict Nāgārjuna's foundational doctrinal stance. The stable reading is therefore to treat xìng-shàn as a translation-bureau idiom whose intended sense is closer to habituated goodness or disposition to good conduct — the very content that the Śāstra's next line glosses as 「好行善道，不自放逸」 ("delight in good conduct and refrain from heedlessness") — rather than as a metaphysical claim about an essence of goodness. Two things should thus be read at once. Nāgārjuna's Sanskrit text contains no claim about an xìng of śīla. Yet the Chinese-language reception of the term xìng-shàn has a history of its own, in which the metaphysical resonance is not always dissolved. A modern reading of the Śāstra is well-served by distinguishing these layers: Nāgārjuna's Sanskrit śīla is unencumbered by such claims; the Chinese xìng-shàn is a Later Qin translation-bureau idiom whose subsequent semantic life takes on additional weight in the East Asian reception. A note on translator-register is in order. The body of the present paper follows Kumārajīva's diction throughout, writing śīla-pāramitā in Chinese as 「尸羅波羅蜜」 (no 多 suffix) when citing T1509 and T1521. Where Xuanzang's later seventh-century Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra translation (T0220, Tang Xianqing 5 to Longshuo 3, 660–663) supplies the parallel term in the alternative register 「淨戒波羅蜜多」 jìngjiè-pāramitā(-duō) — a system-wide replacement across that translation's 599 fascicles — the two are not interchangeable within a single passage. The present paper preserves Kumārajīva's register as the operative body-text vocabulary and notes Xuanzang's register only as a translator-register variation at the footnote level.⁷

2.3 The Three-Precept Classification: Path-Stage Axis Rather Than Functional Object

After the anupalabdhi opening and the xìng-shàn gloss, the Śāstra proceeds to a three-fold precept classification. The taxonomy is introduced through a brief question-and-answer:

「問曰：是不殺戒何界繫？答曰：⋯⋯以實言之，應有三種：或欲界繫，或色界繫，或無漏。」

(Translator's rendering: "Question: To which realm does the precept of non-killing belong? Answer: ... In truth, there are three: bound to the kāma-dhātu [the realm of desire], bound to the rūpa-dhātu [the realm of form], or undefiled.")⁸

The three precepts named here — saṃvara-śīla (律儀戒, the precepts of restraint received by ordinary beings in the realm of desire), dhyāna-generated śīla (定共戒, precepts arising in tandem with the rūpa-dhātu's meditative absorptions), and undefiled śīla (無漏戒, precepts correlated with undefiled jñāna) — share two structural features. First, the discriminating criterion is the stage of the path. The progression is vertical: from the ordinary precepts of the desire-realm, through the dhyāna-generated precepts of meditative absorption, to the undefiled precepts of liberative wisdom. The same fascicle elsewhere makes the ladder explicit: the five precepts → the novice precepts → the full saṃvara → the dhyāna precept → the undefiled precept. Second, the criterion is not functional object. The classification does not say "this precept restrains harm, that one cultivates merit, the third one benefits sentient beings." Whatever each precept "does" with respect to the field of conduct is not what differentiates them; what differentiates them is the stratum of mind on which each precept rests. A philological observation here secures cross-paper continuity with P12. T1509's three-precept classification (by path-stage axis) and the T1581 Pusa dichi jing three-cluster classification (the saṃvara / kuśala-dharma-saṃgrāhaka / sattvārtha-kriyā taxonomy by functional-object axis) share the same Chinese phrase "three-fold precepts" (三戒) but are organized along incommensurable axes. The fact that both treatises are read as canonical Mahāyāna śīla-sources does not warrant treating them as redundant statements of one taxonomy; they are two distinct architectures that happen to count to three. The cross-paper analysis of P12 is the proper locus for the three-cluster framework; the present paper limits itself to recording the path-stage architecture of T1509 and its non-interchangeability with the three-cluster scheme.⁹ The overall shape of fascicle 13's opening is now visible. Anupalabdhi first; should perfect second; xìng-shàn gloss third; three precepts by path-stage fourth. The order is not accidental. The chapter installs the prajñā-prior orientation before any taxonomic apparatus is mounted. Whatever taxonomic and merit-related content fascicle 13 will subsequently supply is supplied within the anupalabdhi frame, not before it. The unobtainable and the unbreakable — both demanded by the chapter-opening sūtra-line — receive their narrative concretization in fascicle 14, to which the analysis now turns.

III. Narrative Concretization (Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra Fascicle 14): The Poison-Dragon and the Sutasoma Back-Reference

3.1 The Poison-Dragon Narrative (Fascicle 14, lines 24–45)

Fascicle 14's śīla-pāramitā chapter centers a single freshly narrated jātaka:

「如菩薩本身，曾作大力毒龍。⋯⋯是龍受一日戒，出家求靜，入林樹間思惟；坐久，疲懈而睡。⋯⋯獵者見之驚喜，⋯⋯以杖按其頭，以刀剝其皮。龍自念言：『我力如意，傾覆此國，其如反掌；此人小物，豈能困我？我今以持戒故，不計此身，當從佛語！』於是自忍，眠目不視，閉氣不息。⋯⋯既以失皮，赤肉在地，⋯⋯諸小蟲來食其身，為持戒故，不復敢動。自思惟言：『今我此身以施諸蟲，為佛道故，今以肉施，以充其身；後成佛時，當以法施，以益其心。』⋯⋯爾時毒龍，釋迦文佛是；⋯⋯菩薩護戒，不惜身命，決定不悔，其事如是，是名尸羅波羅蜜。」

(Translator's rendering, summary form: "In a former life of the bodhisattva, he was a powerful poison-dragon. ... The dragon, having received the one-day precepts, left [his lair] in search of stillness and entered the forest to meditate. After long sitting, he grew weary and slept. ... A hunter, seeing him, was delighted, ... pressed his head with a staff and flayed his skin with a knife. The dragon thought: 'My strength is such that to overturn this kingdom is as easy as turning my hand; this small man — how could he trouble me? But because I am holding the precepts, I will not take account of this body; I shall accord with the Buddha's word.' He endured it himself, closing his eyes and not looking, holding his breath without breathing. ... With his skin gone, the raw flesh lay on the ground, ... and small worms came to eat his body. For the sake of keeping the precepts, he dared not stir again. He reflected: 'Now I give this body to these worms — for the sake of the Buddha-path, I offer now this flesh to fill their bodies; when I become a Buddha in the future, I shall offer the Dharma to benefit their minds.' ... At that time, the poison-dragon was Śākyamuni Buddha. ... The bodhisattva guards the precepts, not sparing body or life, resolved and without regret; such are the events. This is named śīla-pāramitā.")¹⁰

The narrative may be analyzed as a five-beat structure. Beat 1: Reception. The dragon — a being of formidable strength — voluntarily takes upon himself the one-day precepts (一日戒, an early designation of what would later be standardized as the aṣṭāṅga-uposatha or eight-fold abstinence precepts).¹¹ Two terms stand in revealing juxtaposition: voluntary and strength. The recipient is not one who keeps the precepts because he lacks the power to break them; he keeps them because, having ample power, he chooses not to exercise it. Beat 2: Threat. A hunter sees the dragon, presses his head with a staff, and flays his skin with a knife. The threat is then redoubled at a lower register: with the skin gone, swarms of insects come to feed on the exposed flesh. Two stages of threat are deliberately structured: the human threat (motivated by economic interest in the skin) and the biological threat (the unmotivated, undirected feeding of insects). The escalation removes intentional opposition from the equation: the dragon's persistence cannot be a response to malice; the insects mean nothing by their eating. Beat 3: Inner deliberation. The first hinge of the narrative is the dragon's interior speech: "My strength is such that to overturn this kingdom is as easy as turning my hand; this small man — how could he trouble me? But because I am holding the precepts, I will not take account of this body." The structure of the speech is exact. First, acknowledge the available power: I could destroy this kingdom in a moment. Second, refuse to exercise it: because I am holding the precepts, I will not. The configuration is the willed restraint of a strong agent, not the passive endurance of a weak one. At the perfection of śīla, what matters is not whether one can kill but whether, being able to kill, one chooses not to. Beat 4: The dual vow. The second hinge: "Now I give this body to these worms — for the sake of the Buddha-path, I offer now this flesh to fill their bodies; when I become a Buddha in the future, I shall offer the Dharma to benefit their minds." Here the dragon converts the passive structure of being eaten into the active structure of giving. The body is given in the present as flesh-dāna to fill the worms; the Dharma will be given in the future as Dharma-dāna to nourish their minds. The dual vow performs a structural transformation: what was a threat to the body becomes, in the same instant, an act of bodhisattva conduct. Beat 5: The jātaka-identification and the doctrinal closure. "At that time, the poison-dragon was Śākyamuni Buddha. ... The bodhisattva guards the precepts, not sparing body or life, resolved and without regret; such are the events. This is named śīla-pāramitā." The jātaka-frame supplies the conventional identification (Śākyamuni's previous life), and the doctrinal closure supplies the chapter's normative claim: this entire narrative is what śīla-pāramitā is. The narrative's argumentative work is to demonstrate that śīla-pāramitā is not the technical mastery of many precepts nor the avoidance of error within a precept-list; it is the integrity of the precept at the threshold of bodily survival. When the cost of precept-keeping is pushed to its uttermost limit (the loss of one's own body), the perfection of śīla discloses what it actually is. This is the content of 「不惜身命」 ("not sparing body or life") as a Mahāyāna technical phrase.

3.2 The Sutasoma Back-Reference: Fascicle 14 → Fascicle 4

Immediately after the poison-dragon narrative, the Śāstra records a single brief phrase:

「如上《蘇陀蘇摩王經》中說，不惜身命以全禁戒。」

(Translator's rendering: "As stated above in the Sūtra of King Sutasoma: without sparing body or life, in order to keep the precepts whole.")¹²

The grammar is unambiguous: 「如上⋯⋯中說」 ("as stated above in ...") indicates back-reference, not fresh narration. The Sutasoma narrative is not retold in fascicle 14. The full narrative resides instead in T1509 fascicle 4, where King Sutasoma's story is given in detail across roughly sixty lines. A philological correction is owed here, since the secondary literature occasionally treats fascicle 14 as the locus of the Sutasoma narrative. The complete narrative is in fascicle 4, lines 724–781, where the transliteration of the king's name is 須陀須摩 Xūtuó-xūmó (rather than fascicle 14's variant transliteration 蘇陀蘇摩 Sūtuó-sūmó), and the kidnapper-king is named 鹿足 Lùzú — "Spotted-Foot," corresponding to Sanskrit Kalmāṣapāda.¹³ The narrative's hinge passage in fascicle 4 is a verse:

「實語第一戒，實語昇天梯，實語小而大，妄語入地獄。我今守實語，寧棄身壽命，心無有悔恨。」

(Translator's rendering: "Truthful speech is the foremost precept; truthful speech is the ladder ascending to heaven; truthful speech, small in form, is great in substance; false speech enters the hells. I now hold to truthful speech; I would rather discard body and life — my heart has no regret.")¹⁴

The narrative tells of King Sutasoma — a king known for truthful speech (satya / saccavāca) — who is captured by a band-leader of demonic kings (the Kalmāṣapāda of the Sanskrit-Pāli sources, the Lùzú of T1509 fascicle 4). Before his capture, Sutasoma had pledged a gift to a Brahmin; he asks his captor to release him temporarily so that he may keep his vow to the Brahmin, swearing to return after fulfilling it. Having kept the pledge, Sutasoma — true to his oath — returns voluntarily to his captor's domain. The narrative's pivot, made explicit by the verse, is the willingness to "discard body and life" rather than betray the commitment to truthful speech. The argumentative work of the Sutasoma narrative is structurally identical to the poison-dragon's: at the threshold where the cost of precept-keeping reaches its uttermost limit (body and life), the bodhisattva does not break. What differs is the content of the precept tested — non-killing in the dragon's case, the integrity of truthful speech in Sutasoma's. The shared structure is "could break and yet does not; could decline to keep and yet keeps."

3.3 A Lexical Coinage and the Philological Discipline of Jātaka-Sources

Two cautions must accompany the analysis of these narratives. The first is a lexical caution concerning the thematic naming of the Sutasoma-virtue. The compound 信戒 xìnjiè ("Faith-Precept") that one might naturally use to name the narrative-derived virtue concretized in the Sutasoma jātaka — fidelity to vow even unto death — does not appear in T1509 itself. T1509 fascicle 4's operative vocabulary is 實語 shíyǔ ("truthful speech," satya) and 不失信 bùshī xìn ("not breaking trust," saccavāca); neither compound itself forms a fixed term xìnjiè. Where this paper hereafter uses the term xìnjiè / "Faith-Precept" in the contextualized sense of the fidelity-to-vow virtue concretized by the Sutasoma jātaka, it does so as the present paper's own thematic naming, not as a term harvested from T1509. The compound is the paper's framing; the textual operatives 實語 and 不失信 remain T1509's lexicon.¹⁵ The second is a philological caution concerning jātaka-sources. The two jātakas narrated in T1509 fascicle 14 are not Nāgārjuna's invention. Étienne Lamotte's source-critical work in volume III (1970) of his Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna documents their lineage: the Sutasoma narrative is traceable to the Pāli Mahāsutasoma-jātaka (No. 537), the Sanskrit Jātakamālā of Āryaśūra (No. 31, fourth century CE), and the Chinese Liù dù jí jīng (《六度集經》 T0152, translated by Kang Senghui during the Wu kingdom in the mid-third century, fascicle 4); the poison-dragon narrative has a possible antecedent in the Pāli Bhūridatta-jātaka (No. 543), the tale of a precept-keeping nāga.¹⁶ The narratives are thus Mahāyāna re-deployments of widely shared Indian Buddhist jātaka heritage, not original Nāgārjuna compositions. The disclosure of this source-historical fact does not diminish the paper's central claim: Nāgārjuna's distinctive structural contribution is not the invention of the narratives but their placement within the dual-anchor architecture in which anupalabdhi and unbreakability stand simultaneously. The two jātakas of fascicle 14, taken together, supply what may be called the narrative concretization anchor of the Śāstra's śīla-pāramitā chapter. What they demonstrate is that the first anchor — anupalabdhi — does not amount to non-keeping. Far from it: at the threshold where the conventional cost of precept-keeping is maximized, the precept becomes unbreakable precisely because the bodhisattva's self-grasping at the body has dissolved. Anupalabdhi and unbreakability are not at odds — they are, on the Śāstra's reading, the two faces of one perfection.

IV. The Self-Gloss Bridge: Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra Fascicle 14 Lines 158 and 219

4.1 The Self-Gloss Bridge at Line 158

The dual-anchor reading presented in §II and §III, considered as the sum of two structurally distinct anchors, might still be challenged: "Why are these two anchors counted as a single architecture? Does Nāgārjuna himself link them?" The Śāstra's own answer is supplied at fascicle 14 line 158:

「復次，菩薩持戒不以畏故，亦非愚癡，非疑、非惑，亦不自為涅槃故持戒；但為一切眾生故，為得佛道故，為得一切佛法故。如是相名為尸羅波羅蜜。復次，若菩薩於罪、不罪不可得故，是時，名為尸羅波羅蜜。」

(Translator's rendering: "Furthermore, the bodhisattva keeps the precepts not out of fear, nor out of folly, not from doubt nor from confusion, nor for the sake of his own nirvāṇa; but for the sake of all sentient beings, for the sake of attaining the Buddha-path, for the sake of attaining the entire Buddha-Dharma. Such a configuration is named śīla-pāramitā. Furthermore, when the bodhisattva [knows] that transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, that itself is named śīla-pāramitā.")¹⁷

The syntax repays careful attention. The passage contains two 「復次」 ("furthermore") clauses, each of which terminates in the identical predicate 「如是相名為／是時名為尸羅波羅蜜」 ("[this configuration / this moment] is named śīla-pāramitā"). The first 復次 describes the motivational layer of the bodhisattva's precept-keeping: not from fear, not from ignorance, not from doubt, not from self-directed nirvāṇa-seeking — but oriented toward all sentient beings, toward the Buddha-path, toward the totality of the Buddha-Dharma. The configuration arising under that motivation is named śīla-pāramitā. The second 復次 describes the prajñā layer: when anupalabdhi with respect to transgression and non-transgression is in force, that itself is named śīla-pāramitā. Two operations are performed in a single passage. First, the second 復次 recursively cites fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line, with only the grammatical mood altered: where fascicle 13 reads "should perfect" (應具足, imperative), fascicle 14 reads "that itself is named" (是時名為, declarative). The line of fascicle 13 returns as a positively recognized configuration of śīla-pāramitā. Second, the parallel 復次 construction — bodhicitta-motivation and anupalabdhi, identically predicated — declares the two as parallel facets of one śīla-pāramitā, neither subordinated to the other. This is the Śāstra's own textual self-gloss of the dual-anchor architecture; no external commentary is needed to establish the link. The line stands at fascicle 14's midpoint and bridges the preceding narrative concretization to the anupalabdhi-dialectic that immediately follows.

4.2 The Anupalabdhi-Dialectic at Lines 164–169

Immediately after the bridge, the Śāstra stages a question-and-answer that secures anupalabdhi against a predictable objection:

「問曰：若捨惡行善，是為持戒，云何言『罪、不罪不可得』？答曰：非謂邪見、麁心言『不可得』也；若深入諸法相，行空三昧，慧眼觀故，罪不可得；罪無故，不罪亦不可得。復次，眾生不可得故，殺罪亦不可得；罪不可得故，戒亦不可得。」

(Translator's rendering: "Question: If to abandon evil and to cultivate good is precept-keeping, how can one say 'transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable'? Answer: It is not a saying of 'unobtainable' from wrong views or coarse mind; rather, when one enters deeply into the marks of dharmas, practices the śūnyatā-samādhi, and sees with the eye of wisdom — therefore transgression is unobtainable; transgression being absent, non-transgression too is unobtainable. Furthermore, because sentient beings are unobtainable, the transgression of killing is unobtainable; because transgression is unobtainable, the precept too is unobtainable.")¹⁸

The questioner's concern is intelligible: if both transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, has the Śāstra not effectively dissolved the precepts? The Śāstra's answer is in two layers. First, anupalabdhi is not the careless or nihilistic claim that there is "nothing to be obtained." It is the dharma-eye's seeing, which arises only "when one enters deeply into the marks of dharmas and practices the śūnyatā-samādhi." Anupalabdhi is vision, not slogan. Second, anupalabdhi unfolds internally: transgression's own-nature is not obtainable; therefore transgression is, in the ultimate sense, not graspable; non-transgression, defined by contrast to transgression, loses its contrastive ground and thereby is also not graspable. The next step deepens the analysis still further: because the sentient being against whom an act of killing might be committed is itself unobtainable, the transgression of killing is unobtainable; and because the transgression is unobtainable, the corresponding precept (the precept of non-killing) is unobtainable in the same ultimate sense. The final sentence has a structural echo worth noting: "because sentient beings are unobtainable, the transgression of killing is unobtainable" prefigures the later trimaṇḍala-pariśuddhi ("three-circle purity," 三輪體空) analysis of śīla, in which the agent of killing, the patient of killing, and the act of killing are all seen to be empty. The present paper does not develop the three-circle analysis here; it is the territory of a subsequent paper in the volume.¹⁹ The present point is more modest: the anupalabdhi-dialectic of lines 164–169 is not an external prajñā-overlay imposed onto an otherwise self-standing precept; it is the Śāstra's own unfolding of how the precepts look in the gaze of prajñā.

4.3 The Chapter-Closing Recursive Citation at Line 219

The śīla-pāramitā chapter of fascicle 14 closes with a single sentence:

「以是故言『於罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜』。」

(Translator's rendering: "Therefore it is said: 'Because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā.'")²⁰

The line is brief, but its location performs a structural function. The chapter's argumentation — narrative concretization, self-gloss bridge, anupalabdhi-dialectic — is brought to a close not by a new conclusion but by an explicit citation of fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line, prefixed by 「以是故言」 ("therefore it is said"). The whole chapter is thereby sealed within a three-layer recursive frame: Fascicle 13 opening: 「罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜」 ↓ Fascicle 14 midpoint (line 158): 「若菩薩於罪、不罪不可得故，是時，名為尸羅波羅蜜」 ↓ Fascicle 14 closing (line 219): 「以是故言『於罪、不罪不可得故，應具足尸羅波羅蜜』」 This three-layer recursive citation is the Śāstra's own internal architectural marker. The dual-anchor reading is therefore not an interpretive overlay; it is the Śāstra's self-glossing of its own structural design, and the present paper's contribution lies in reading the marker rather than in proposing it.

4.4 Two-Truth Simultaneity as the Mark of Pāramitā-Ization The Śāstra's śīla-pāramitā chapter operates on two truths simultaneously. At the conventional level (saṃvṛti, 世俗), the precept is unbreakable: the poison-dragon refuses to use his strength even at the cost of being eaten alive; King Sutasoma refuses to break his vow even at the cost of returning to his captor's death-bound domain. At the ultimate level (paramārtha, 勝義), the precept is unobtainable: transgression's own-nature, non-transgression's own-nature, the sentient being, and the precept itself are all unobtainable under the gaze of prajñā. The decisive structural point is that these two truths are not sequential. Nāgārjuna's śīla-pāramitā is not the doctrine that "first one keeps the unbreakable precept and then, later, realizes its unobtainability." It is the doctrine that the two are simultaneously in force in the same act of precept-keeping. In a single act of keeping the one-day precept, the dragon is both unbreakably faithful (at the conventional level) and free from grasping at transgression's nature (at the ultimate level). The simultaneous standing of unbreakable and unobtainable is, in the Śāstra, the mark of śīla-pāramitā as such. The argument is therefore: - Unbreakable alone (without anupalabdhi) is ordinary precept-keeping, not yet pāramitā.

Unobtainable alone (without unbreakable) is the wrong-view nihilism that the Śāstra explicitly rules out at lines 164–169.
Unbreakable and unobtainable simultaneously is śīla-pāramitā. This is the structural conclusion that fascicle 14 closes upon, recursively citing fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line as the Śāstra's own sealing of the chapter.

V. Cross-Traditional Positioning: Pāli Linear Teleology vs. Madhyamaka Two-Truth Simultaneity

5.1 The Pāli Linear Teleology: AN 5.213 and AN 11.1

To sharpen the contour of Nāgārjuna's śīla-pāramitā, two classical Pāli formulations of sīla's doctrinal weight may be set alongside it. The first is Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213, the Sīlasutta, which enumerates five benefits (ānisaṃsa) of moral conduct: the precept-keeper (i) acquires great wealth (bhogakkhandha), (ii) gains a good reputation (kalyāṇa-kittisadda), (iii) enters any assembly without fear (visārada), (iv) dies unconfused in mindfulness (asammuḷha), and (v) after death is reborn in a fortunate destination (sugati-saggaloka).²¹ These five are not the totality of sīla's significance — but they constitute a stable core of the early Buddhist account: the precept's meaning is laid out along the axis of the consequences it brings about — wealth, reputation, fearlessness, clarity at death, a good rebirth. The second is AN 11.1, the Kimatthiyasutta, which articulates an eleven-link chain of conditioning. The chain begins with sīla and proceeds through avippaṭisāra (absence of remorse), pāmojja (gladness), pīti (joy), passaddhi (tranquility), sukha (ease), samādhi (concentration), yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (knowledge-and-vision of things as they are), nibbidā (disenchantment), virāga (dispassion), and culminates in vimutti-ñāṇadassana (knowledge-and-vision of liberation).²² The sutta's closing line is the volume's recurring touchstone: > Iti kho, ānanda, kusalāni sīlāni anupubbena aggāya parentīti. > (Translator's rendering: "Thus, Ānanda, wholesome moral conduct progressively leads up to the highest.") The decisive terms are anupubbena ("step by step") and aggāya parentī ("leading up to the highest"). The structure of sīla's significance is linear teleology: sīla is the starting point of an eleven-link chain in which the realization of each link conditions the next, and the chain as a whole proceeds step-by-step toward the final liberative state. Sīla's perfection consists in the chain's capacity to unfold in full sequence.

5.2 The Co-Emergent Pāramitā-Framing of the 5th–6th Centuries

A philological observation requires a corrective claim here. The thematization of sīla as a pāramī(tā) — i.e., as a completable independent virtue within a list of perfections — is post-canonical in both lineages. In the Pāli, the four principal Nikāyas (DN, MN, SN, AN) thematize sīla extensively as an independent moral category, but they do not isolate sīla-pāramī as a thematized compound. The compound surfaces only in the late stratum of the Khuddaka — in the Buddhavaṃsa (which lists the ten pāramīs) and the Cariyāpiṭaka (whose first chapter is devoted to sīla-pāramī) — and is systematized in the commentarial layer of Dhammapāla's Cariyāpiṭaka-aṭṭhakathā (c. 6th century) and the Jātaka-nidānakathā attributed to the circle around Buddhaghosa (c. 5th century).²³ In the Northern Mahāyāna, śīla-pāramitā as a thematized chapter-heading emerges in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā (2nd–3rd century CE) and is given its sustained treatise-length treatment in T1509 (3rd–4th-century composition, Kumārajīva's Chinese translation 401–406). The two lineages' systematic thematizations of the pāramī(tā) of śīla are thus contemporaneous. The Pāli sīla-pāramī receives its sustained commentarial development in the 5th–6th centuries, in Sri Lanka, within the Mahāvihāra lineage of the Theravāda; the Northern śīla-pāramitā receives its sustained treatise-length development in the 3rd–5th centuries, in northwestern India and Central Asia, within the prajñāpāramitā lineage. They are concurrent post-canonical developments, not a unilateral inheritance. The structural consequence is decisive. If one looks for Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution by asking which tradition first thematized śīla as a pāramī(tā), one finds nothing distinctively Nāgārjunian: the thematization is a shared post-canonical phenomenon across both lineages. The unique structural contribution must be located elsewhere. The proposal of this paper is that Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution lies not in the pāramitā-framing itself but in the addition of the anupalabdhi layer to it. The Pāli pāramī-framing (as systematized in the Cariyāpiṭaka-aṭṭhakathā and the Jātaka-nidānakathā) preserves the linear teleology of the canonical sīla-doctrine: sīla-pāramī is one of ten pāramīs in a series that progresses step-by-step toward Buddhahood. The Northern śīla-pāramitā of Nāgārjuna adds a layer that the Pāli sīla-pāramī literature does not develop: the prajñā-prior anupalabdhi layer, which makes the perfection of śīla simultaneously unobtainable (at the ultimate level) and unbreakable (at the conventional level). The axis-difference can be summarized in two formulas: - Pāli sīla-pāramī: linear teleology — sīla → avippaṭisāra → pīti → samādhi → paññā → vimutti, progressing step-by-step (anupubbena aggāya parentī).

Northern śīla-pāramitā of T1509: two-truth simultaneity — at the same instant of precept-keeping, the precept is conventionally unbreakable and ultimately unobtainable. These are not opposed structures. The linear teleology is not rejected by T1509; the poison-dragon narrative explicitly maintains the teleological orientation ("for the sake of the Buddha-path, ... when I become a Buddha in the future"). What T1509 adds is an orthogonal layer that runs through every link of the teleology: the ultimate-level anupalabdhi of śīla. The addition, this paper argues, is the mark of Nāgārjuna's pāramitā-ization of śīla.

5.3 The Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā Sister Corpus

The anupalabdhi layer of T1509 is not a local peculiarity of fascicles 13–14. It is distributed across the broader Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus. The strongest evidence is supplied by the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā (T1521 Shízhù pípóshā lùn 《十住毘婆沙論》, attributed in the Chinese transmission to Nāgārjuna and translated by Kumārajīva), whose fascicles 16–17 contain a five-chapter sequence devoted to śīla: chapter 31 護戒品 (T26n1521_p0107c25), chapter 32 解頭陀品 (p0111b26), chapter 33 助尸羅果品 (p0116a27), chapter 34 讚戒品 (p0120a07), and chapter 35 戒報品 (p0121a19). T1521 frames śīla-pāramitā within the daśabhūmi scheme — the second ground (the vimalā or "Stainless" ground, 離垢地) is the bodhisattva-stage at which śīla-pāramitā is the presiding perfection.²⁴ The register-difference between T1509 and T1521 is real but not contradictory. T1509 fascicles 13–14 are a standalone treatise-mode treatment of śīla-pāramitā — the pāramitā-chapter of a prajñāpāramitā commentary, organized topically. T1521 fascicles 16–17 are a staged-progression treatment — the śīla-chapter within the daśabhūmi commentary, organized along the path-stages of the ten grounds. The Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus can speak in both registers without contradiction. The cross-corpus evidence for the distribution of the anupalabdhi layer comes at T1521 chapter 33 (T26n1521_p0116b02–12):

「此人深樂空故，於第一義中而亦不得護三業法。」

(Translator's rendering: "Because this person deeply delights in emptiness, even at the level of ultimate truth, he does not obtain the dharma of guarding the three karmas.")

The phrase 「於第一義中而亦不得護三業法」 ("even at the level of ultimate truth, he does not obtain the dharma of guarding the three karmas") is a direct cross-corpus parallel to T1509's anupalabdhi-dialectic. The guarding of the three karmas (身 body, 口 speech, 意 mind) is, in conventional terms, the very content of śīla-keeping; the ultimate-level non-obtaining of this guarding is the anupalabdhi of śīla in a slightly different vocabulary. The distribution of the anupalabdhi layer across two distinct treatises in the Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus stabilizes the layer as a structural feature of the corpus, not a local rhetorical flourish of T1509 fascicle 14. An authorship-discipline note is warranted at this point. T1521's attribution to Nāgārjuna has been questioned in modern scholarship — Étienne Lamotte's 1944 volume I introduction registers reservations, and Hirakawa Akira's 1974 History of Indian Buddhism gives extended attention to the question — with the possibility that T1521 is a later compilation incorporating Nāgārjuna's school's interpretive material. The Chinese transmission's attribution reads 「聖者龍樹造、姚秦三藏鳩摩羅什譯」 ("composed by the Holy One Nāgārjuna, translated by Tripiṭaka-master Kumārajīva of Yao Qin") at T26n1521_p0107c23–24. The present paper takes a neutral position by speaking of "the Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus" — honoring the operative reference of the Chinese transmission while acknowledging the open scholarly question.²⁵ Whatever the resolution of the authorship question, the thematic continuity of the anupalabdhi layer across T1509 and T1521 is a textual fact independent of authorship-attribution.

5.4 Three Modern Interlocutors: Lamotte, Williams, Keown

Contemporary English-language scholarship on T1509 fascicles 13–14 is sparse. Three modern interlocutors warrant focused dialogue, each operating along a distinct scholarly axis. Étienne Lamotte (1903–1983), the Belgian Buddhist scholar whose five-volume Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Louvain, 1944–1980) remains the only sustained book-length Western-language treatment of T1509, devotes volume III (1970) to the pāramitā-chapters that include fascicles 13–14. Concession. Lamotte's three-layered reading of T1509 fascicles 13–14 — conventional Vinaya continuity, Mahāyāna bodhicitta-motivated reframing, and Madhyamaka anupalabdhi-deconstruction — is the direct intellectual antecedent of the structural analysis in §III–§IV above. His philological documentation of the jātaka-sources for the poison-dragon and Sutasoma narratives — Bhūridatta-jātaka, Mahāsutasoma-jātaka, Jātakamālā, T0152 Liù dù jí jīng — is the most thorough available in any Western language. Extension. The present paper's positioning of T1509's anupalabdhi layer differs in one detail of historical placement. Lamotte's 1970 reading aligns the anupalabdhi passages tightly with the later doxographic Madhyamaka school of Candrakīrti and Bhāviveka. The present paper reads T1509's anupalabdhi layer instead as an internal gloss within the prajñāpāramitā commentarial lineage — a development of the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā's own anupalambha-yoga rather than an anticipation of later Madhyamaka doxographic identity. The distinction is one of placement within intellectual genealogy, not of substantive disagreement on the content of the anupalabdhi-passages. Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2009), is the most reliable contemporary English-language entry-point to the bodhicitta-motivated reframing of śīla in Mahāyāna. Williams's chapter 10, "The Ethics of the Bodhisattva," synthesizes the prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka treatments of Mahāyāna ethics and has substantially updated the older taxonomies of Edward Conze's 1960s framework.²⁶ Concession. Williams's account of bodhicitta-motivated śīla maps closely onto T1509 fascicle 14 line 158's first 復次 clause — the bodhicitta-orientation of the bodhisattva's precept-keeping ("for the sake of all sentient beings, for the sake of attaining the Buddha-path, for the sake of attaining the entire Buddha-Dharma"). Williams is correctly read as a synthesis of the contemporary doctrinal-historical consensus on this layer. Extension. Williams's treatment is textbook-synthesis-level rather than monograph-specialist-level on T1509 itself: T1509 receives roughly a single-page overview in chapter 10, with a Lamotte-pointer for further detail. The present paper extends Williams's Mahāyāna-ethics synthesis by returning to T1509's textual evidence directly, with particular attention to the second 復次 clause at line 158 (the anupalabdhi layer) and to the chapter-closing recursive citation at line 219 (the structural seal of the dual-anchor architecture). Damien Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics (Palgrave, 1992; paperback 2001), has developed the most sustained virtue-ethics reading of Buddhist ethics in the contemporary English-language literature. Concession. Keown's virtue-ethics framework, drawing on Aristotelian-Aquinas register, fits T1509's anupalabdhi layer better than a consequentialist reading. Anupalabdhi's apophatic structure — neither transgression nor non-transgression is graspable as a self-existent entity — falls outside the calculational framework of any consequentialist ethics. But it falls within a virtue-ethics framework whose central category is character-formation: under the anupalabdhi gaze, the bodhisattva's precept-keeping is not the calculation of consequences nor the mechanical observance of rules but the maturation of character toward a state in which the precept is held without grasping at the precept-relation as such. Extension. Keown's virtue-ethics framework was developed primarily from Pāli and early-Mahāyāna sources, with limited direct engagement of T1509. The present paper extends Keown's framework into T1509's anupalabdhi layer by proposing that anupalabdhi does not dissolve śīla but deepens it into a non-grasping character-formation. The apophatic dimension is not a corrosive of virtue but a maturation of it — an extension beyond Keown's own explicit treatment of the Pāli and early-Mahāyāna corpora. A brief negative-selection note may be added here. Charles Goodman's consequentialist reading (Consequences of Compassion, Oxford University Press 2009), the subject of P12's interlocutor dialogue, is set aside in the present paper because the anupalabdhi-axis of T1509 is structurally orthogonal to consequentialist calculation: the apophatic non-graspability of transgression's own-nature cannot be entered into any calculus-of-consequences ledger without remainder. Edward Conze's Buddhist Thought in India (Allen & Unwin, 1962) is treated only as a historical reference, having been substantially updated by Williams 2009. Jan Nattier's A Few Good Men (University of Hawai'i Press, 2003) addresses the Ugraparipṛcchā rather than the prajñāpāramitā commentary lineage and does not engage T1509 fascicles 13–14 directly. Christopher Gowans's Buddhist Moral Philosophy (Routledge, 2015) is a textbook genre and does not pursue the anupalabdhi-section in depth.

5.5 Honest Disclosure: Sixty Years of Sparse Coverage

A frank disclosure is in order. No English-language monograph has appeared in the sixty years since Lamotte's volume III taking T1509's śīla-pāramitā chapter as its sustained subject. Article-length treatments scattered across JIABS (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies), the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and similar venues invariably cite Lamotte's volume III as their secondary anchor without independent textual analysis of the anupalabdhi-passages. The structural analysis of §III–§V above — anupalabdhi axis, narrative concretization, self-gloss bridge, two-truth simultaneity — is offered as a contemporary English-language scholarly supplement on this specific corpus, in conscious awareness of the thinness of the existing English-language coverage. The paper does not claim to fill the gap; it claims only to add one analytic contribution along a single dimension, in the hope that the sparseness of the field invites further work.

VI. Conclusion: Nāgārjuna's Unique Contribution Is the Anupalabdhi Layer

The paper's central argument can now be drawn together. T1509's śīla-pāramitā chapter, across fascicles 13 and 14, exhibits a dual-anchor architecture. The first anchor — the anupalabdhi axis — is installed by the single sūtra-line that opens fascicle 13: "Because transgression and non-transgression are unobtainable, one should perfect the śīla-pāramitā." This line places the prajñā-prior orientation of unobtainability ahead of every taxonomic, motivational, or merit-related treatment of the precepts. The second anchor — the narrative concretization — is supplied by fascicle 14's poison-dragon jātaka (a fresh narration) and the back-reference to King Sutasoma's complete narrative in fascicle 4. Together the two jātakas demonstrate that anupalabdhi is not non-keeping: precisely because the bodhisattva is free of self-grasping at the body, the precept becomes unbreakable at the threshold of bodily survival.

The internal connection of the two anchors is not an interpretive overlay. T1509 itself textually self-glosses the architecture. At fascicle 14 line 158, a bridge passage parallels the bodhicitta-motivated layer and the anupalabdhi layer through a doubled 復次 construction, with each layer identically predicated as śīla-pāramitā. At fascicle 14 line 219, the chapter closes by recursively citing fascicle 13's opening sūtra-line in declarative form. The three-layer recursive citation — opening, midpoint, close — is the Śāstra's own structural marker, and the present paper's dual-anchor reading is named for the Śāstra's self-glossing rather than for any external claim about it.

Placed within the 5th–6th-century co-emergence of the pāramitā-framing across the Pāli and Northern lineages, three structural propositions follow:

The thematization of śīla as a pāramī(tā) is a shared post-canonical phenomenon of both lineages — emerging in the Khuddaka's late stratum (Buddhavaṃsa, Cariyāpiṭaka) and its commentarial layer (Cariyāpiṭaka-aṭṭhakathā, Jātaka-nidānakathā) on the Pāli side, and in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-and-Śāstra corpus on the Northern side — not the unilateral invention of either tradition.
Within that shared framing, Nāgārjuna's unique structural contribution is the addition of the anupalabdhi layer to śīla — the doctrine that, in the ultimate sense, transgression, non-transgression, the sentient being, and the precept are equally unobtainable.
The mark of Nāgārjuna's pāramitā-ization of śīla is two-truth simultaneity: at the same instant of precept-keeping, the precept is conventionally unbreakable (the jātaka threshold) and ultimately unobtainable (the anupalabdhi analysis).

The Pāli sīla-pāramī's linear teleology (sīla → avippaṭisāra → samādhi → paññā → vimutti, anupubbena aggāya parentī) is not rejected by T1509. The teleological orientation is preserved in the poison-dragon's "for the sake of the Buddha-path" and "when I become a Buddha." What T1509 adds is an orthogonal layer that runs through every link of the teleology: the ultimate-level anupalabdhi of śīla. This addition, the paper argues, is the structural core of Nāgārjuna's śīla-pāramitā discussion.

T1509 fascicles 13–14 are the master architectural treatment of śīla-pāramitā, but the functional differentiation of śīla within the bodhisattva path is not unfolded there. The nine-fold taxonomy of bodhisattva precepts — the navavidha-śīla (種性戒, 一切戒, 難行戒, 一切門戒, 善士戒, 一切種戒, 遂求戒, 此世他世樂戒, 清淨戒) — is supplied instead by the Bodhisattvabhūmi chapter on śīla within the Yogācārabhūmi (T1579), translated by Xuanzang during the Tang in 646–648, which is the subject of the next paper in this volume (P14).²⁷ The dual-anchor architecture established here is the prior condition; the functional differentiation of the nine-fold taxonomy is the subsequent unfolding. The pāramitā-ization of śīla, on the present reading, draws its prajñā-axis from Nāgārjuna (where the anupalabdhi layer is the structural core) and its functional differentiation from the Maitreya / Asaṅga corpus (where the nine-fold taxonomy is the structural articulation). The two together — anupalabdhi and navavidha-śīla — supply the complete face of Mahāyāna bodhisattva śīla as it stabilizes through the 5th and 6th centuries. The present paper has treated the former; the latter is reserved for the paper that follows.

References

Primary sources (Chinese Buddhist Canon · Taishō Tripiṭaka)

Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra 《大智度論》(T1509, Nāgārjuna composed, Kumārajīva translated, Later Qin Hongshi 401–406). Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, vol. 25.
Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā 《十住毘婆沙論》(T1521, attributed to Nāgārjuna, Kumārajīva translated, Yao Qin). Taishō, vol. 26.
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra 《大般若波羅蜜多經》(T0220, Xuanzang translated, Tang Xianqing 5 to Longshuo 3, 660–663). Taishō, vol. 5–7.
Bodhisattvabhūmi of the Yogācārabhūmi 《瑜伽師地論·菩薩地戒品》(T1579 fascicles 40–42, attributed to Maitreya / Asaṅga, Xuanzang translated, Tang 646–648). Taishō, vol. 30.
Bodhisattvabhūmi-sūtra 《菩薩地持經》(T1581, Dharmakṣema translated, Northern Liang fifth century, fascicle 5). Taishō, vol. 30.
Mahāyānābhidharmasamuccayavyākhyā 《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》(T1606, Sthiramati composed, Xuanzang translated, fascicle 11). Taishō, vol. 31.
Tiantai pusa jie shu 《天台菩薩戒疏》(T1812, Mingkuang's Tang-era redaction). Taishō, vol. 40.
Liù dù jí jīng 《六度集經》(T0152, Kang Senghui translated, Wu mid-third century, fascicle 4 Sutasoma parallel). Taishō, vol. 3.

Primary sources (Pāli · SuttaCentral, CC0)

Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213, Sīlasutta (PTS AN iii 252). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Pāli + Bhikkhu Sujato's English translation, both under CC0 license.
Aṅguttara Nikāya 11.1, Kimatthiyasutta (PTS AN V 1). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Pāli + Bhikkhu Sujato's English translation, both under CC0 license.
Mahāsutasoma-jātaka (Jātaka No. 537). Pāli text via PTS; English translation via Cowell and Rouse 1957 (cited via Lamotte 1970 vol. III).
Bhūridatta-jātaka (Jātaka No. 543). Pāli text via PTS; English translation via Cowell and Rouse 1957 (cited via Lamotte 1970 vol. III).

Modern scholarship

Bodhi, Bhikkhu. A Treatise on the Pāramīs: From the Commentary to the Cariyāpiṭaka by Ācariya Dhammapāla. BPS Wheel No. 409/411. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1978. (Paywalled; referenced via paraphrase.)
Conze, Edward. Buddhist Thought in India. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962. (Treated as a historical reference; superseded by Williams 2009.)
Goodman, Charles. Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. (P12 interlocutor; set aside in P13 because consequentialism is orthogonal to anupalabdhi.)
Gowans, Christopher W. Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2015. (Textbook genre; not pursued in depth.)
Hirakawa Akira 平川彰. Indo bukkyō shi 『印度佛教史』. 2 vols. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1974–1979. (Authorship-history reference for T1521.)
Jayawickrama, N. A., trans. The Story of Gotama Buddha: The Nidāna-kathā of the Jātakaṭṭhakathā. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990. (Paywalled; referenced via paraphrase.)
Keown, Damien. The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. Basingstoke / New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992; paperback edition 2001. (Virtue-ethics framework engaged in §V.4.)
Lamotte, Étienne. Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra). 5 vols. Louvain: Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 1944–1980, especially vol. III (1970). (Belgian copyright life+70, expires 2053; paraphrased without verbatim citation throughout.)
Nattier, Jan. A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003. (Scope concerns Ugraparipṛcchā; not engaged on T1509 directly.)
Williams, Paul. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. 2nd edition. London / New York: Routledge, 2009. (Doctrinal-history slot in §V.4.)

Series Cross-References

Within Volume IV SĪLA, preceding

SILA-P09 The Architecture of the Pāṭimokkha — the volume's foundational treatment of śrāvaka precept-architecture; the present paper's path-stage three-precept classification of T1509 (§2.3) shares structural continuity with the prātimokṣa-foundation established there.
SILA-P10 Three Vinaya Lineages in Conversation — five-recension comparative vinaya-philology; the present paper does not engage vinaya-comparison and references it only at the level of shared precept-keeping foundation.
SILA-P11 Two Sangha Crises and the Mechanism of Boundary-Renegotiation — the case-by-case attribution discipline (interpretive application vs. textual self-gloss) that the present paper applies is part of the same discipline-thread codified at P11.
SILA-P12 The Three-Body Architecture of Bodhisattva Sīla — direct predecessor; the present paper's opening recapitulates P12's three-cluster framework and asks the question of how the bodhisattva precepts become a pāramitā. The attribution-mode continuity (Zhiyi-explicit in P12; T1509-self-glossing in P13) is identified as belonging to the same attribution-class.

Within Volume IV SĪLA, forthcoming

SILA-P14 The Bodhisattvabhūmi Chapter on Sīla — direct successor; the Yogācārabhūmi's nine-fold śīla taxonomy (T1579 fascicles 40–42) supplies the functional differentiation that complements the present paper's dual-anchor architectural treatment.
SILA-P15 The Yingluo Sūtra and the East Asian Receiving-Architecture — three-cluster precepts in their Chinese reception and ordination-architecture; not engaged in the present paper.
SILA-P21 Sign-less Precepts in the Prajñāpāramitā and Vajracchedikā — main locus for the sustained treatment of T0220 / T0235 sign-less precepts; the present paper cameos T0220 fascicle 3 at footnote level and reserves the sustained engagement for P21.
SILA-P23 Three-Circle Emptiness Applied to Sīla — the trimaṇḍala-pariśuddhi analysis of śīla; T1509 fascicle 14 lines 164–169 (cited at ¹⁸ and ¹⁹) supplies a prefigurative formulation that P23 will develop systematically.

Cross-paper recurring anchors

Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213 Sīlasutta and 11.1 Kimatthiyasutta — the Pāli baseline for sīla's doctrinal weight, shared across SILA-P02, P06, P07, P08, P09, P13, and P23, each citing from a different angle.
The "fragrance of śīla" (T1509 fascicle 13 line 98) — main locus is SILA-P08 Sīlagandha — the Fragrance That Travels Against the Wind; not engaged in the present paper.
The three-mode attribution discipline (P11 interpretive application / P12 explicit textual claim / P13 textual self-gloss) — codified in tasks/lessons.md (2026-05-19 entry) as a case-by-case discipline for citing source-internal claims.

Cross-volume polyphonic anchors

NIAN-P03 Mindfulness as Salutation — the anupalabdhi axis of the present paper shares a non-objectifying register with the no-object dimension of mindfulness-as-salutation, though the textual corpora are entirely distinct.
DĀNA-P15 The Non-Abiding Gift — the Vajracchedikā's "should generate the mind without abiding on anything" shares the prajñā-apophatic axis with the present paper's anupalabdhi; the full cross-reading is reserved for SILA-P21.
SAMĀDHI volume (forthcoming) — the anupalabdhi layer of śīla established here is foundational for the samādhi and paññā axes of the next volume; the Śūraṅgama's "Four Pure Instructions" (the SAMĀDHI volume's śīla–samādhi hinge) will systematically connect the present paper's anupalabdhi-foundation to samādhi-preparation.

CBETA collation: The primary Chinese textual anchors of the present paper — Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509, translated by Kumārajīva, Later Qin Hongshi 401–406; fascicle 13 Explaining the Definition of Precepts in the Opening Chapter, Section 22 and Explaining the Praise of Śīla-pāramitā in the Opening Chapter, Section 23; fascicle 14 the continuation of the same chapter; fascicle 4 the complete Sutasoma jātaka narrative at lines 724–781; fascicle 22 the three-precept classification within the Eight Recollections commentary at p0225c13–19); the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā (T1521, attributed to Nāgārjuna and translated by Kumārajīva, Yao Qin; fascicles 16–17, chapters 31 through 35, the five-chapter sister-corpus on śīla-pāramitā); the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (T0220, Xuanzang's Tang translation 660–663; fascicle 3 the six-pāramitā mutual-pervasion section and the anupalabdhi-parallel passage, cameo only); the Bodhisattvabhūmi-sūtra (T1581, Dharmakṣema, Northern Liang fifth century, fascicle 5 three-cluster framework passage, carried from SILA-P12); and the Mahāyānābhidharmasamuccayavyākhyā (T1606, Sthiramati composed and Xuanzang translated, fascicle 11 śīla-pāramitā passage, cameo only) — have all been collated against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka (2024 edition). The Pāli anchors Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213 Sīlasutta and 11.1 Kimatthiyasutta are cited via SuttaCentral with Bhikkhu Sujato's English translation and the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Pāli text, both under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Modern scholarship — Étienne Lamotte, Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna, 5 vols, Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 1944–1980; Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, Routledge 2nd ed. 2009; Damien Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, Palgrave 1992 (paperback 2001) — is paywalled and engaged through paraphrase with page-range references; no verbatim citation.

Author: 釋慧鏡 Shi Huijing Project: Pointing at the Moon · Six Practice Gates License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Repository: github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

Pointing at the Moon · The Six Practice Gates · Volume IV SĪLA · Paper 13 · May 2026

Footnotes

For the three-cluster framework's structural reconstruction and the Tiantai commentary's three-cluster ↔ three-body mapping, see SILA-P12 (The Three-Body Architecture of Bodhisattva Sīla), this volume, particularly §V on the Tiantai pusa jie shu 《天台菩薩戒疏》 (Mingkuang's Tang-era redaction, T1812, Taishō vol. 40, T40n1812_p0584b07–10). The three-cluster framework names what the bodhisattva precepts are along the functional-object axis; the present paper takes up the further question of how the bodhisattva precepts become a pāramitā. ↩
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (《大智度論》, the Śāstra), fascicle 13 chapter-opening sūtra-line. Taishō vol. 25, T1509, p. 0153b02 (CBETA: T25n1509_p0153b02). The expression "chapter-opening single sūtra-line" refers to the line standing prior to the commentary's expository sections: the Śāstra's standard convention is to cite a passage from the underlying Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā (the Mahā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra in Kumārajīva's earlier translation T0223) and then to expound it line by line. This single line is the sūtra-citation that opens fascicle 13's śīla-pāramitā exposition. ↩ ↩²
Attribution discipline. The dual-anchor reading is presented as the Śāstra's own textual self-gloss rather than as the present paper's external interpretation, on the basis of T1509 fascicle 14 line 158 (the bridge passage that recursively cites the fascicle 13 opening sūtra-line) and fascicle 14 line 219 (the chapter-closing declarative recitation of the same line). The case-by-case attribution practice across this series distinguishes three modes: (i) the present paper's interpretive application of an external framework — as in P11's mapping of the Vaiśālī crisis onto Daoxuan's po jiémo seng 破羯磨僧 typology — requires "the present paper proposes" language; (ii) a tradition-internal source's explicit doctrinal claim — as in P12's three-cluster ↔ three-body mapping, which is the Tiantai precept-commentary's own claim (Mingkuang, T1812) at T40n1812_p0584b07–10 — does not require qualifying language and may be cited directly; (iii) the present case, in which T1509 itself textually self-glosses the architecture, also does not require qualifying language. This three-mode discipline is codified in the project's working notes, tasks/lessons.md (2026-05-19 entry). ↩
T1509 fascicle 13, T25n1509_p0153b02. The single sūtra-line is the Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā citation that opens fascicle 13's śīla-pāramitā exposition. The Sanskrit source-text underlying Kumārajīva's translation is the Mahā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Kumārajīva's earlier T0223), of which T1509 is the commentary. ↩
T1509 fascicle 13, T25n1509_p0153b03–05. The full passage reads: 「尸羅（秦言性善），好行善道，不自放逸，是名尸羅。或受戒行善，或不受戒行善，皆名尸羅。」 The clause "或受戒行善，或不受戒行善" ("whether one cultivates good through receiving the precepts or without receiving them") indicates that śīla in this context does not require a formal ordination act — it is the disposition itself, however acquired. ↩
The "Qin tongue" (秦言 X) formula recurs in T1509 as a translation-bureau gloss-convention. Fascicle 13 elsewhere supplies the parallel gloss 「秦言共住」 for uposatha / poṣadha (布薩, the bi-monthly observance day) — same syntax, same translation-bureau register. "Qin" (秦) here refers to the Later Qin (姚秦) dynasty (384–417 CE) during which Kumārajīva worked at Chang'an under Yao Xing's patronage. ↩
Translator-register variation. Xuanzang's seventh-century translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (T0220, Taishō vol. 5–7, dated Tang Xianqing 5 to Longshuo 3, 660–663) systematically employs 「淨戒波羅蜜多」 (jìngjiè-pāramitā[-duō]) in place of Kumārajīva's 「尸羅波羅蜜」 — a system-wide replacement attested across all 599 fascicles of T0220 (full-text search confirms zero occurrences of 尸羅波羅蜜 in T0220; 128 fascicles use 淨戒波羅蜜多). T0220 fascicle 3 supplies a direct parallel to T1509 fascicle 13's anupalabdhi line: 「若菩薩摩訶薩以無所得而為方便，修行淨戒波羅蜜多，了達一切犯、無犯相皆不可得」 — preserving the underlying architecture across the translator-register difference. The present paper preserves Kumārajīva's register as the body-text vocabulary; the sustained treatment of T0220's jìngjiè-pāramitā discussion is reserved for the Vajracchedikā and Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra paper later in this volume (SILA-P21, Sign-less Precepts in the Prajñāpāramitā). ↩
T1509 fascicle 13, T25n1509_p0155c. The passage discusses the realm-binding (界繫 jièxì) of the precept of non-killing and closes by establishing the three-fold division of the precepts. The phrase 「以實言之」 ("in truth-speaking" / "speaking truly") marks the Śāstra's own affirmative conclusion against the partial accounts cited from the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma (《迦栴延子阿毘曇》, the Jñānaprasthāna of Kātyāyanīputra) and other Abhidharma compendia. ↩
T1509 fascicle 22, T25n1509_p0225c13–19. The fuller passage on the three-precept classification reads: 「戒有二種：有漏戒、無漏戒。有漏復有二種：一者、律儀戒，二者、定共戒。⋯⋯是律儀戒能令諸惡不得自在、枯朽折減，禪定戒能遮諸煩惱。⋯⋯無漏戒能拔諸惡煩惱根本故。」 This is the path-stage axis: each higher precept successively encompasses a deeper level of removal. Compare with T1581 fascicle 5, T30n1581_p0918b01–06, the three-cluster framework of saṃvara-śīla / kuśala-dharma-saṃgrāhaka-śīla / sattvārtha-kriyā-śīla, which operates on the functional-object axis. The two share the Chinese phrase "three-fold precepts" (三戒) but classify along incommensurable axes. SILA-P12 of this volume develops the three-cluster framework; the present paper records the path-stage architecture and notes the non-interchangeability. ↩
T1509 fascicle 14, T25n1509_p0161c–p0162a (lines 24–45 of the vault edition). The quoted passage is an excerpt; the full narrative spans the cited fascicle-14 lines. Cross-reference: CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition. ↩
The 「一日戒」 (one-day precepts) is the early designation of what later standardizes as the aṣṭāṅga-uposatha — the eight-fold abstinence precepts (no killing, no stealing, no sexual conduct, no false speech, no intoxicants, no perfumes / cosmetics / dancing / entertainment, no eating after midday, no high or luxurious beds). The institutional mechanism of the uposatha is treated at length in SILA-P07 Uposatha and the Genius of Intermittent Monasticism of this volume; the present paper references it only as narrative backdrop for the poison-dragon's reception of the precept. ↩
T1509 fascicle 14, T25n1509_p0161a. The clause 「如上《蘇陀蘇摩王經》中說」 ("as stated above in the Sūtra of King Sutasoma") indicates explicit back-reference: 「如上」 ("as [stated] above") to material already presented in fascicle 4, rather than a fresh narration. ↩
Philological note. The complete Sutasoma narrative resides in T1509 fascicle 4 (T25n1509_p0089–p0090, vault lines 724–781), where the transliteration is 須陀須摩 Xūtuó-xūmó and the kidnapper-king is named 鹿足 Lùzú, corresponding to Sanskrit Kalmāṣapāda ("Spotted-Foot"). Fascicle 14 employs the variant transliteration 蘇陀蘇摩 Sūtuó-sūmó and does not name the kidnapper. The later East-Asian-commentarial normalization 斑足 Bānzú — a literal Chinese rendering of Kalmāṣapāda — does not appear in T1509 itself and is widely disseminated only in subsequent commentarial layers. For philological fidelity, the present paper preserves T1509's own usage: 鹿足王 when citing fascicle 4, no name when citing fascicle 14, and 斑足 is not adopted. ↩
T1509 fascicle 4, T25n1509_p0089–p0090, narrative at vault lines 724–781 with the verse-stanza core at lines 766–769. The fascicle-4 closing line — 「如是等種種本生中相，是為尸羅波羅蜜滿」 ("such are the various jātaka-features; this is the fullness of śīla-pāramitā") — explicitly tags the Sutasoma narrative as a paradigmatic jātaka-illustration of śīla-pāramitā's completion. ↩
Authorial coinage. The compound xìnjiè 信戒 ("Faith-Precept") used in this paper to name the narrative-derived virtue concretized in the Sutasoma jātaka — fidelity to vow even unto death — does not appear in T1509 itself. Fascicle 4's operative vocabulary is 實語 shíyǔ ("truthful speech," corresponding to satya) and 不失信 bùshī xìn ("not breaking trust," cognate with saccavāca); neither forms a fixed compound xìnjiè. The present paper proposes xìnjiè as a thematic naming of the jātaka-derived virtue, parallel to bùshā jiè 不殺戒 (the precept of non-killing) demonstrated by the poison-dragon. The term is the paper's framing, not T1509's lexicon. ↩
Étienne Lamotte, Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra), 5 vols (Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1944–1980), vol. III (1970). Lamotte's source-critical apparatus identifies the Pāli Mahāsutasoma-jātaka (No. 537), the Sanskrit Jātakamālā of Āryaśūra (No. 31, fourth century CE), and the Chinese Liù dù jí jīng (《六度集經》, T0152, Kang Senghui's mid-third-century translation, fascicle 4) as parallel transmissions of the Sutasoma narrative, and identifies the Pāli Bhūridatta-jātaka (No. 543) as a possible Pāli antecedent for the poison-dragon narrative. Lamotte's volumes are Belgian copyright (author died 1983; copyright extends to 2053); the present paper paraphrases and references his source-critical conclusions without verbatim quotation. ↩
T1509 fascicle 14, T25n1509_p0161c–p0162a, line 158 in the vault edition. The line in full reads: 「復次，菩薩持戒不以畏故，亦非愚癡，非疑、非惑，亦不自為涅槃故持戒；但為一切眾生故，為得佛道故，為得一切佛法故。如是相名為尸羅波羅蜜。復次，若菩薩於罪、不罪不可得故，是時，名為尸羅波羅蜜。」 The doubled 復次 ("furthermore") parallel construction is the textual marker that pairs the bodhicitta-motivated reframing with the anupalabdhi-layer, with both clauses identically predicated as śīla-pāramitā. ↩
T1509 fascicle 14, T25n1509_p0162a–b, vault lines 164–169. The full anupalabdhi-dialectic passage continues at lines 167–169 with further analysis of the unobtainability of the agent of killing and the unobtainability of the precept-relation itself, which prefigures the trimaṇḍala-pariśuddhi analysis taken up in SILA-P23 of this volume. ↩ ↩²
Trimaṇḍala-pariśuddhi (三輪體空, "three-circle purity," also rendered 三輪清淨) is the Mahāyāna doctrinal analysis according to which the agent, the patient, and the act itself are all empty of own-nature. Applied to the precept of non-killing: the killer, the being killed, and the killing-act are equally unobtainable. T1509 fascicle 14's clause 「眾生不可得故，殺罪亦不可得；罪不可得故，戒亦不可得」 may be read as one of the earliest formulations of this analysis applied to śīla. The sustained development of the three-circle analysis is reserved for SILA-P23 Three-Circle Emptiness Applied to Sīla; the present paper notes the prefiguration without expanding it. ↩ ↩²
T1509 fascicle 14, T25n1509_p0163b, vault lines 219–220. Fascicle 14 line 221 onward begins the next chapter — kṣānti-pāramitā (羼提波羅蜜, the perfection of forbearance); the śīla-pāramitā chapter formally closes at line 220. ↩
Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213, Sīlasutta. Pāli text via Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka (CC0 license); English translation by Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0 license), as published on SuttaCentral. PTS reference: AN iii 252. The five ānisaṃsā enumerated are: (i) appamādādhikaraṇaṁ mahantaṁ bhogakkhandhaṁ adhigacchati (great wealth through diligence); (ii) kalyāṇo kittisaddo abbhuggacchati (a good reputation spreads); (iii) yaññadeva parisaṁ upasaṅkamati ... visārado upasaṅkamati (one enters any assembly self-assured); (iv) asammūḷho kālaṁ karoti (one dies unconfused); (v) kāyassa bhedā paraṁ maraṇā sugatiṁ saggaṁ lokaṁ upapajjati (one is reborn in a happy heavenly realm after death). ↩
Aṅguttara Nikāya 11.1, Kimatthiyasutta. PTS reference: AN V 1. The eleven-link chain is: sīla → avippaṭisāra (non-remorse) → pāmojja (gladness) → pīti (joy) → passaddhi (tranquility) → sukha (ease) → samādhi (concentration) → yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (knowledge-and-vision of things as they are) → nibbidā (disenchantment) → virāga (dispassion) → vimutti-ñāṇadassana (knowledge-and-vision of liberation). The closing phrase anupubbena aggāya parentī — anupubbena "progressively," aggāya "to the highest," parentī "lead up" — is a recurring anchor across the SĪLA volume (SILA-P02, P06, P07, P08, P09, and the present paper). ↩
A full survey of the four principal Nikāyas (DN, MN, SN, AN) confirms that sīla as an independent moral category is treated extensively, but sīla as a pāramī — a completable independent perfection within a list of ten perfections (dāna, sīla, nekkhamma, paññā, vīriya, khanti, sacca, adhiṭṭhāna, mettā, upekkhā) — is not thematized at the sutta level. The compound sīla-pāramī first surfaces in the late Khuddaka stratum: the Buddhavaṃsa (which lists the ten pāramīs) and the Cariyāpiṭaka (whose first chapter is devoted to sīla-pāramī). Systematic treatment appears in the commentarial layer — Dhammapāla's Cariyāpiṭaka-aṭṭhakathā (c. 6th century, Anurādhapura) with its three-level stratification (pāramī / upapāramī / paramattha-pāramī) — and in the Jātaka-nidānakathā attributed to the circle around Buddhaghosa (c. 5th century). Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of Dhammapāla's pāramī-excursus (The All-Embracing Net of Views, Buddhist Publication Society 1978, with the pāramī excursus translated separately as A Treatise on the Pāramīs, BPS Wheel No. 409/411) and N. A. Jayawickrama's translation of the Jātaka-nidānakathā (The Story of Gotama Buddha, Pali Text Society 1990) remain the standard English-language references for the Pāli commentarial pāramī-doctrine; both are in-copyright, and the present paper paraphrases without verbatim citation. ↩
T1521 fascicle 16 chapter 31 ("Guarding the Precepts," 護戒品), T26n1521_p0107c25 onward, and fascicle 16 chapter 33 ("Auxiliaries to the Fruit of Śīla," 助尸羅果品), T26n1521_p0116b02–12. The Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā's framing of the bodhisattva stages locates śīla-pāramitā as the presiding pāramitā of the second bhūmi (the vimalā "Stainless" ground, 離垢地), in continuity with the Daśabhūmika-sūtra's own structural assignment of each pāramitā to its corresponding ground. ↩
T1521's attribution to Nāgārjuna has been questioned in modern scholarship. Étienne Lamotte's 1944 Le Traité volume I introduction registers reservations, and Hirakawa Akira's 1974 Indo bukkyō shi 『印度佛教史』 (History of Indian Buddhism, Tokyo: Shunjūsha, vol. 1) gives extended attention to the question, with the possibility that T1521 is a later compilation incorporating Nāgārjuna's school's interpretive material. The Chinese transmission's attribution at T26n1521_p0107c23–24 reads 「聖者龍樹造、姚秦三藏鳩摩羅什譯」 ("composed by the Holy One Nāgārjuna, translated by Tripiṭaka-master Kumārajīva of Yao Qin"). The present paper takes a neutral position by speaking of "the Nāgārjuna-attributed corpus" — honoring the operative reference of the Chinese transmission while acknowledging the open scholarly question. ↩
Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2009), particularly chapter 5 (Prajñāpāramitā), chapter 6 (Madhyamaka), and chapter 10 ("The Ethics of the Bodhisattva"). Williams's 2nd edition substantially updates the framework of Edward Conze's earlier surveys (Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962) to reflect scholarship from the 1990s–2000s. The present paper engages Williams through paraphrase + page-range references; Williams's monograph is in-copyright (Routledge) and is not blockquoted. ↩
The nine-fold śīla taxonomy (navavidha-śīla, 九種戒相) of the Bodhisattvabhūmi chapter of the Yogācārabhūmi (T1579, Xuanzang's translation, dated 646–648) reads: 種性戒 (clan-precepts, gotra-śīla), 一切戒 (all-precepts, sarva-śīla), 難行戒 (difficult-to-keep precepts, duṣkara-śīla), 一切門戒 (gate-of-all-purposes precepts, sarvato-mukha-śīla), 善士戒 (good-person precepts, satpuruṣa-śīla), 一切種戒 (all-kinds precepts, sarvākāra-śīla), 遂求戒 (desire-fulfilling precepts, vighātārthika-śīla), 此世他世樂戒 (precepts for happiness in this and the next world, ihaparalokika-sukha-śīla), and 清淨戒 (purity-precepts, pariśuddha-śīla). The next paper in this volume, SILA-P14 The Bodhisattvabhūmi Chapter on Sīla, takes up the systematic treatment of these nine categories. ↩

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